Of course it makes sense if you use facts!

The hell? He accuses William of believing in solid fact and yet chastises him for speaking out of ignorance?

Also, if you have to disdain facts in order to maintain your beliefs, you’re not demonstrating much esteem for your beliefs. If the person making this post had facts, you bet your ass they’d be trotting them out. After all, he tries to paint god’s existence as a fact (right after taking an epic two-flush monster shit on the reliability of facts).

And who says the world was created out of a pile of dirt? Where was this pile of dirt if not on the world?

And of course, no arguments for the credibility of god’s existence. Why should there be? Good arguments are built on facts.

When not defending the planet from inevitable apocalypse at the rotting hands of the undead, JT is a writer and public speaker about atheism, gay rights, and more. He spent two and a half years with the Secular Student Alliance as their first high school organizer. During that time he built the SSA’s high school program and oversaw the development of groups nationwide. JT is also the co-founder of the popular Skepticon conference and served as the events lead organizer during its first three years.

Robert B.

“Pile of dirt” is actually a somewhat accurate description of the pre-planetary mass that collected to form the Earth. It wasn’t literally a pile, of course, because there was nothing to pile it on; it was more like a large cloud in space. But it was a big bunch of relatively small particles of things like silicon, iron, and carbon, so “dirt” is a decent comparison. (“Gravel” would be better, or “dust.”)

http://researchtobedone.wordpress.com researchtobedone

“If the person making this post had facts, you bet your ass they’d be trotting them out.”

Very true. I had an extended argument on astrology once where one of the people I was arguing with repeatedly claimed that the evidence didn’t matter and repeatedly tried to provide evidence at the same time. Evidence was relevant if it made his point and irrelevant when it didn’t, just like that.

To this day, I’m not sure if he just didn’t realize what he was doing, or if his conception of the word “evidence” was incredibly narrow and primitive, or if he was just trolling. I’ve definitely had discussions on abiogenesis where after a long period of arguing, I realized that the reason I couldn’t get through to someone was because they couldn’t conceive of the relationship between self-replicating systems and life, because they thought life was some sort of abstract super-magic-spirit-force-is-with-you type deal.

sisu

Facts are meaningless. You can use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true!

http://www.facebook.com/brad.mcallister.90 bradmcallister

Brilliant JT.

Randomfactor

Reminds me of Majikthise and Vroomfondel arguing that the computer Deep Thought should be shut down as an infringement on philosophers.

Sastra

My guess is that part of the confusion (meaning the part that isn’t already structured into religion) has to do with the writer failing to clarify the fact that he’s talking about different kinds of facts (ie. things.) There are “solid facts” which have to do with solid, physical, material objects and then “spiritual facts” which have to do with God — with a big fuzzy area in between the two, where moral facts, mental facts, abstract facts, emotional facts, and other things which you can’t hold in your hand lie.

Loqi

“The fact that god created the universe is just as credible as the world being created out of a pile of dirt.”

Yes, both of those are equally credible.

Urban

I find it ironic that this person can’t believe that the world is made from dirt, but has no problem believing that humans were made from dirt…

anteprepro

I wonder what the “Just because life has been bad for you” part is based on. If it was something that William actually said, the Religion Defender is a dismissive asshole. If it wasn’t, then the Religion Defender is assuming “they don’t believe in Jesus; must mean that something bad happened to them to make them Angry At God!”. Which makes the Defender a bigoted asshole.

Also, judging by the sheer amount of hare-brained self-contradiction and disproportional venom, I am fairly certain that “manipulate it all to make it seem like I was the one entirely at fault here” and “you speak out of utter ignorance” are nothing short of the highest grade of Irony.

http://slrman.wordpress.com James Smith

Let’s give some credit here. How often do we see this level of self-contradictory nonsense in one relatively short text message?

It’s so absurd it looks more like a “Poe” by someone wanting to make theists look stupid. I really don’t think they need any help. I see them doing just fine in that regard every day,

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